Patriots captured liberated Virginia on December 9, 1775 as militias from Virginia and North Carolina defeated the redcoats at Great Bridge.
On December 9, 1867, a Constitutional Convention to draft a new state document convened in Atlanta. Among the 166 to 169 delegates elected to the Constitutional Convention were 33 or 37 African-American members – accounts vary.
Georgia Politics, Campaigns, and Elections
The State House Study Committee on Navigable Streams recommended no changes to Georgia’s laws regarding river access, according to the Capitol Beat News Service via the Albany Herald.
A legislative study committee that has been examining how to guarantee Georgians access to the state’s navigable rivers and streams without violating private property rights is siding with the status quo.
The House Study Committee on Navigable Streams’ final report released this week recommended no changes to the current definition of “navigability” in state law.
The panel also suggested the General Assembly refrain from setting forth which rivers and streams in Georgia are considered navigable and which are not. Legislation introduced into the state House of Representatives during this year’s session that failed to make any headway listed 64 rivers and creeks “presumed to be navigable.”
A debate over a long-assumed right of passage along Georgia waterways – including the right to fish and hunt – began early last year when a property owner on the Yellow Jacket Shoals portion of the Flint River banned fishing there and sued the state to enforce it.
State lawmakers responded with legislation codifying public fishing rights into state law. But that didn’t clear up confusion over which rivers and streams across the state are navigable and, thus, open to fishing and paddling, and which are off limits.
Boating enthusiasts and representatives of the recreational boating industry complained that some property owners along Georgia rivers and streams were preventing them from exercising their right to fish, while property owners told the study committee some boaters were trespassing on their land and leaving trash in their wake.
“The prevailing view is that most landowners and outdoor enthusiasts have no problem with one another, but seek respect from one another,” the committee’s report concluded. “Respect cannot be legislated, but trespass can be legislated, confrontations can be mitigated, and the details of Georgia law can be better communicated.”
Members of the Freedom to Float Coalition, an alliance of outdoor recreation enthusiasts and environmental groups, criticized the committee for not recommending any changes in the laws governing boating rights.
“Maintaining the status quo may lead to the public being excluded from more streams across the state and will have a chilling effect on the state’s robust outdoor recreation economy,” said Rena Peck, executive director of Georgia Rivers.
“The legislature needs to protect boating on the state’s small streams in order to level the playing field with neighboring states where recreational boating in canoes and kayaks is protected on all streams capable of floating recreational watercraft.”
The study committee held several meetings across Georgia between August and November leading to its 11-page report. While the panel made six recommendations, it is unclear whether any will lead to legislation during the 2025 session starting next month.
I, for one, appreciate the effort and work put in by the members of the Study Committee and its Chair, State Rep. Lynn Smith (R-Newnan).
Some Georgians may be anxious about the upcoming Trump Administration 2.0, according to the Savannah Morning News.
For some Georgians, the real anxiety of the 2024 election started after November 5. One month out, they’re anticipating how a second Trump presidency may affect everything from career goals to family planning.
For others, their nerves settled once Donald Trump was re-elected, with the results bringing a renewed hope and sense that the country was moving in the right direction.
Jonathan Plott, a 24-year-old nursing student from Dalton, Georgia, had successfully managed his anxiety for several months in the lead up to the election. With aspirations to join the U.S. military, he was told he would have to ween himself off his anxiety medication and wait 18 months before he could enlist.
“I had been doing great right up until the day after Election Day, where I relapsed hard to the point where I couldn’t leave the apartment for anything without having an attack and wanting to vomit,” Plott told USA TODAY.
He said getting back on his anxiety medication after the election wasn’t “as much of a choice as it was a necessity,” as he started experiencing extreme nausea, shaking, and dizziness. He then had to take a week off work to readjust to the medicine again.
Other Georgians have had the opposite reaction since Nov. 5. For Trich Jackson LeCroy, a small business owner and mother living in Tyrone, Georgia, it felt like “a huge weight had been lifted” once she learned the results of the election.
LeCroy was experiencing a lot of anxiety before the election, a feeling that has now dissipated.
“We were very worried for our kids, and their kids, especially at the rate at which this country was crumbling from within under this administration,” LeCroy said. “My kids wouldn’t have the same freedom or opportunity if Trump had lost.”
“In one word: dread.” That’s how Jason Puley, a 51-year-old analyst and father living in an Atlanta suburb, summed up his feelings since the election.
“I didn’t have high expectations coming into this,” he explained to USA TODAY. “I felt like I had a pretty good finger on the pulse of what was going to happen – and then it happened. And I still wasn’t mentally prepared.”
In his conservative hometown, he’s afraid that Trump’s rhetoric may impact the local board of education and what his daughter is taught in school.
“I worry about who’s on the school board and how emboldened they’re going to be to change schools that they consider ‘woke.’ Especially in this red area, they may try to push or remove certain things from the schools.”
In the weeks since the election, he’s cut back on his media consumption by about 80% to safeguard his mental health. His advice for others struggling with post-election anxiety: “Try to know less.”
Also anxious: some migrants in Georgia, according to the AJC.
During a recent outreach visit to a South Georgia Hispanic church, immigrant advocate Daniela Rodriguez said a woman told her she’d begun discussing with her children the possibility that she’d be deported and separated from them. With the second inauguration of Donald Trump under two months away, she was hoping Rodriguez could help her prepare for the worst.
“There is definitely a lot of fear in the community, a lot of our uncertainty,” said Rodriguez, executive director of Migrant Equity Southeast, a Savannah-based nonprofit that assists immigrant and refugee populations across south and coastal Georgia.
The campaign that delivered Trump a new term as president featured a recurring pledge to create the largest deportation program in U.S. history, capable of removing unauthorized immigrants by the millions.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has spoken with immigrant community leaders and advocates across the state about their outlook on the next four years — and what they’re telling increasingly jittery immigrant families in the wake of the election.
In South Georgia, Rodriguez said her group will prioritize “rapid response” work in 2025 and beyond, assisting families who find themselves in crisis due to new federal policies. Other leaders spoke of the need to learn from previous periods of intense immigration enforcement — including the first Trump term and some years under Barack Obama — to better protect immigrant residents this time around.
For now, advocates are focused on educating immigrants about their rights, and encouraging them to make plans for their children’s care should detention and deportation split families up. They are also encouraging community members to set up mutual aid networks and report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) sightings to one another.
“We’re asking them to get organized within their own communities, to stay as up-to-date as possible with anything that could happen, like if there are police checks near their trailer park or if ICE is showing up to a neighborhood and arresting people,” said Adelina Nicholls, co-founder of the Atlanta-based Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights. “We think that what’s coming is really big, and that one nonprofit, or two, or 10 won’t be able to cope.
The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System discussed their legislative priorities for the 2025 legislative session, according to the Savannah Morning News.
According to the Savannah-Chatham County Public School System (SCCPSS) board’s 2025 legislative priorities, in Fiscal Year 2024, the district spent more than $1.1 million from its general fund for pre-K, “primarily to address pay disparities for Pre-K teacher salaries.”
The disparity range per teacher was anywhere from $12,000 to $30,000 less than a K-12 teacher’s annual salary, according to Chief Human Resource Officer Ramon Ray. He provided that assessment Thursday morning at the school district’s annual Legislative Priorities breakfast. He specifically noted that variables of each pre-K teacher’s degree or certification attainment have impacts on that range.
Funding, in general, was the key focus of what School Board Vice President and Legislative Liaison Denise Grabowski highlighted in her talking points to legislators alongside her fellow board members and Superintendent Denise Watts.
The pre-K teacher salary disparity was one of a few state unfunded mandates where SCCPSS had to make up the difference this past year. Another unfunded mandate that impacted the district’s general fund was the Georgia Early Literacy Act, which required public school districts to cover expenses for teacher literacy instruction training and new K-12 reading curriculums.
Beyond continuing asks for further state investment in early education, Grabowski echoed many past school board sentiments that the state’s Quality Basic Education (QBE) funding formula is “woefully inadequate for today’s needs” and in need of an overhaul.
The legislative breakfast took place at the Robert W. Groves High School Media Center within the Davis-Edwards-Harris Educational Complex, 101 Priscilla Thomas Way, and was attended by the following legislators:
Sen. Derek Mallow (D-District 2)
Sen. Billy Hickman (R-District 4)
Rep. Ron Stephens (R-District 164)
Rep. Anne Allen Westbrook (D-District 163)
Rep. Edna Jackson (D-District 165)Hickman spoke up on the pre-K funding woes, mentioning the Georgia Lottery, which funds the state’s pre-K program.
“We’ve got the money to do it, I don’t understand why we haven’t done it,” Hickman said. He explained that the lottery has over $2.4 billion dollars but there are only 80,000 pre-K slots funded currently. He said that the Georgia Lottery Corp., which oversees and operates the lottery, will tell people the program is 91% funded, but “that’s not true…this whole thing has been camouflaged by somebody.”
Hickman said legislators had not really known what was going on but are focused on it now. He also mentioned how the newly launched Georgia Promise Scholarship could be used for pre-K needs.
Mallow concurred that the lottery funds need to be scrutinized next year as the General Assembly should be the body to appropriate state funds. He also took the opportunity to reiterate his push for the legalization of sports betting to aid in funding early childhood education and care initiatives.
Stephens echoed the lottery concerns, noting that he is working with Stacey Abrams to tackle the challenges with how the money is managed. “We’ve got a massive amount of money that should go for education, so we’re going to continue to work down that path,” he said.
The Wilkes County School District is the first in Georgia with an all “clean energy” bus fleet, according to the Macon Telegraph.
The Wilkes County School District announced last week that it’s the first in Georgia to have all of its daily bus routes served by electric and propane buses instead of diesel buses.
In a news release from communications consultants Sugarcane Strategies, the organization said Wilkes County was one of the few nationwide to transition to fully clean fixed-route buses, according to the release.
The effort to make this fleet more environmentally friendly started in 2017 when the transportation director, Ron Stephens, was hired. He realized 70% of the bus fleet had exceeded its lifespan of 14 years, so he went to the county’s Department of Education and eventually a seven year plan was created to update the fleet.
With money from the Board of Education, the first 10 propane buses were purchased in late 2019 and arrived six to eight months later, according to Stephens.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean School Bus Program was then announced in 2020, allowing school districts to get either a a $30,000 credit for a propane bus or a free electric bus and charging station in exchange for destroying a diesel bus, according to Stephens.
In hopes of being accepted into the EPA’s program, the school district didn’t want to solely request propane buses, so officials requested five electric buses on top of another 12 propane buses. They were soon accepted. Now, the school district has 22 propane buses and five electric, giving them spares with two more clean buses than they have routes.
Chatham County commissioners tabled consideration of an “urban camping” ordinance, according to GPB.
Chatham County commissioners had been scheduled to consider a so-called “urban camping” code during their regular Friday meeting.
However, the item was taken off the agenda shortly before, with no official explanation given during the meeting.
If passed, the measure would make it a criminal offense to sleep in public spaces — meaning sheriff’s deputies could possibly fine or jail people experiencing homelessness.
Local laws such as the one proposed in Chatham County were declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court this past summer in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson.
The Court’s conservative supermajority ruled in that case that the incarceration of involuntarily homeless people does not violate a citizen’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment.
A Chatham County spokesperson wrote in a statement to GPB that the ordinance “was not ready to be read in to the record yet,” and would be introduced at a future meeting.
The measure has already drawn fierce opposition from the public: an online petition organized by the Savannah Democratic Socialists of America garnered nearly 500 signatures within 24 hours.
Bulloch County noted that their fire services agreement with Statesboro ends in June 2025, according to the Statesboro Herald.
Following a vote Tuesday evening of the county commissioners, interim Bulloch County Manager Cindy Steinmann sent Statesboro City Manager Charles Penny a notice Wednesday that the agreement under which the Statesboro Fire Department serves an area outside the city limits within five miles of its stations will end June 30.
“I anticipate that a new agreement will need to be negotiated prior to July 1, 2025, and I look forward to working with you and others in that regard,” Steinmann concluded the letter.
Next June 30 was the original end date of the current intergovernmental fire service agreement from June 16, 2020. But without a termination notice from either the city or the county six months in advance, it would have renewed automatically, as County Attorney Jeff Akins explained Tuesday to the Board of Commissioners.
If allowed to renew, the agreement could still have been cancelled by either local government with a one-year notice, Akins noted. But he advised commissioners that a notice of termination was appropriate now if they wanted “to renegotiate aspects of the agreement or change the delivery of fire protection services in some way.”
Tift County Commissioners are considering changes to the county’s defined benefits plan for employees, according to the Tifton Gazette.
During their Dec. 3 meeting, members of the Tift County Board of Commissioners reviewed a proposed amendment to their Defined Benefit Plan that would provide continued retirement benefits to county employees who have reached retirement should they carry on working with the county.
County manager Jim Carter explained that the county’s current benefit plan has an established period that grants a county employee retirement benefits once they have worked for the county for thirty years, but that following that time, they would not receive any additional funds if they decided to retain their employment with the county.
Carter identified this as an issue, as it disincentivized retiring employees from continuing to work with the county, especially in their public safety department, due to the risk that would come with passing away while working and leaving their spouse only with the initial retirement funds, unlike the continued benefits they would receive had they been fully retired.
The amended plan would instead allow retired county workers to continue receiving these benefits past this thirty year period were they to continue serving Tift County. Carter was optimistic it would draw in more seasoned and experienced workers, as well as entice their existing staff to remain employed with the county to receive the extended benefits.
He assured the commissioners that the amendments had been covered in their upcoming budget for 2025, and that the plan would be structured around a five-year period as a sort of test run of its effectiveness. At the conclusion of that time, the commissioners could review the program and discuss their next move.
Houston County Superior Court Clerk Carolyn Sullivan is retiring, according to 13WMAZ.
Sullivan, now 77, is retiring at the end of this year after 59 years in the county clerk’s office. Her journey began unexpectedly when the previous county clerk, who had served for 40 years, needed help with his daughter’s schoolwork.
“I was in high school when I first met him,” Sullivan recalled. “After graduation, he called me in, and I went to work that very day, Aug. 11, 1965.” Starting as a deputy clerk in the real estate department, Sullivan worked her way through every division of the clerk’s office.
She became chief deputy clerk and then automatically assumed the role of clerk in 1982 after the previous officeholder passed away. She subsequently was elected to continue in the position.
Sullivan has witnessed remarkable changes in county government and technology. She remembers the days when six employees would wait their turn to use the single electric typewriter the county had purchased.
Now, the office operates with digital systems backed up in multiple locations, including Warner Robins, Atlanta and Columbus, Ohio.
The only aspect of her job she didn’t enjoy was the political nature of being an elected official.
“I don’t care for the politics,” she admitted. “I don’t like having to run for office. But that’s the way it is.
Habersham County Commissioners voted to name Tim Sims as interim County Manager, according to AccessWDUN.
Current County Manager Alicia Vaughn is leaving the position effective December 27. On Monday, Habersham commissioners voted to name Tim Sims, the county’s current chief financial officer, as interim manager.
“I am excited for the opportunity to further serve Habersham County,” Sims said in a release from the county. “I am hoping to continue to lead the county in a positive direction as it has been in the last four years.”
Habersham County officials say Vaughn will work with Sims between now and her departure to transition him into the role. Commission Chair Ty Akins said Sims made the most sense to serve as interim manager.
“I think that selecting Mr. Sims for the Interim County Manager position is the most logical choice,” Akins said. “He is already up to speed on all the county’s major projects and is familiar with the staff and operations.”
United States Representative Mike Collins (R-10th District) honored Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum on the House floor, according to AccessWDUN.
“Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum will be leaving the force at the end of this year, marking an end to an incredible and historic 39-year career,” Collins said.
Mangum was just the second elected female sheriff in the state of Georgia when she won in 2012. She was also named the 2023 Georgia Sheriff of the Year.
“From her time as a radio operator to being elected as the second female sheriff in Georgia history, Sheriff Mangum leaves a legacy that has saved countless lives and struck fear in the hearts of Georgia’s criminals,” Collins said.
Mangum is a lifelong resident of Jackson County according to her bio on the sheriff’s office’s website and began her career in law enforcement in 1985.
Kevin McCook will be her successor, winning the Republican primary in May.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Athens) was the only member of Georgia’s Congressional Delegation who did not sign a letter supporting Governor Brian Kemp’s request for $12.2 billion dollars in disaster relief funding , according to the AJC.
Every member of Georgia’s congressional delegation except one, U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde, is backing Gov. Brian Kemp’s request for $12 billion in disaster funding.
Lawmakers say the money is needed to help businesses and families in the state hit hard by Hurricane Helene. But Clyde decided not to join them, in part because he wants budget cuts to offset any disaster relief.
Clyde, R-Athens, couldn’t be reached for comment. But his office said he supports the House Freedom Caucus statement that encourages lawmakers to reject President Joe Biden’s $100 billion disaster aid request.
“The House should consider only what is absolutely necessary right now to provide critical relief to hurricane victims and farmers and pay for it with offsets from wasteful spending elsewhere in the government, then wait for President (Donald) Trump to take office to better manage disaster relief,” the statement said.
The remaining 15 members of Georgia’s delegation, including lawmakers from both parties, are pushing to get the aid approved before the current session of Congress ends in two weeks. In a letter to the top Republican and Democrat on the Appropriations Committee in each chamber, they said they are in full support of Kemp’s request and hope for quick approval.
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